00:22:45 · James Andersen, Mikk
[00:22:45] S1: It's hard to explain. Well, first of he's personally a very gregarious kind of guy, and he knows how to make people feel good about themselves. But he's just like, he doesn't have a college education, but he's just a great businessman. He can spy on opportunity and know how to take advantage of it. He motivated people. He did a small thing one time that I still remember and actually wrote about. Company had a good quarter, and I think it was coming out of this really difficult time, everybody's struggling. And the company had a good quarter, and he walked around the plant. There are only 40 people in this factory, and handed each person in factory a $100 bill. Now look, at the end of the day, that $100, even for relatively low wage employees I know it's nice, but it's not like the end of the world. But you would have thought that was the most important thing that ever happened to these people, because the way he did it. He just went and said, Look, I just appreciate you. And I learned from him some things about motivating people. And by the way, he did that less, I think, to motivate people and more just because it was the right thing to do. Like, you know, you learn something from people like that. I don't know, just it's really hard to describe. You meet a winner, sometimes you just know it. And he was one of them. And by the way, he's continued to go on to do amazing things. Just it's an incredibly successful guy. [00:24:16] S0: So first, successful exit, very successful exit considering all the all what happened. Done. What's next for you?
00:24:26 · James Andersen
[00:24:26] S1: The next deal was the hardest deal, even harder in a lot of ways. It turns out it was another furniture company. Well, the next deal we closed was was actually the the deal I told you about before that ended up becoming a public company. But the third deal we closed was really difficult because... And, again, we... You learn over time. Right? But we partnered with a founder who was never ever, ever gonna listen to anything we had to say, was 100% driven by himself. And, look, he was really successful, but he built a company that couldn't survive, an afternoon without him. And we tried everything we could to make the business more valuable for all of us, and he just wouldn't do it. He just was an impossible person to deal with. And I can remember, I had little kids at the time. Son that was born shortly after we bought that company, I'd go to sleep at night because I was so tired, just exhausted. Like, I'd be gone. But then he'd wake up, and I'd get up, and then I couldn't go back to sleep because all I could do was think about how we were going to manage this really impossible partner that we had. And again, you know, this is our third deal. We can't blow it up. It needs to be successful. And it was just so hard. We ended up managing through it. We sold the company. We made way, way less money than we would have if our partner, you get in the nest, like, I'm not sure he really ended up, if he really was a partner, but if he had let us do, make the company more robust with better systems, but he just, he just got in the way everywhere, and it was... We learned we'll never do that again. We'll never partner with somebody like that again.
00:26:17 · Mikk, James Andersen
[00:26:17] S0: What did you... When doing, like, underwriting this person, what did you get wrong wrong? [00:26:22] S1: Well, he had a background of blowing up businesses in the past when he didn't get along with his financial partners. Literally drove the prior business into the ground, and then restarted the one that we ended up buying from him, or with him. Look, at the time, it was early on, we were doing the deals we could. Again, it's scratchy and clawing as an entrepreneur, right? We took a lot of risk, more risk than we would take today with a committed fund. It was a little bit of a swing for the fences kind of thing. No, we didn't pay very much for the business, and we convinced ourselves that you know, the three times multiple for a company growing at 40% a year would overcome this guy. And I guess we were right. We made four times our money, but it was painful. It really was. And so not doing that again. [00:27:09] S0: What about this period for you when it comes to day to day? I mean, like, it's so easy to say now, like, small kid and kids at home. But in reality, you have those kids at home, lack of sleep, sometimes four or five hours, constantly waking up during the night. Then you have those long days at the office. How was the day today like? Was this just like another moment for you where you just keep your head down and just just keep going? Pretty much. It's really not It's They're just breaking there.
00:27:09 · Mikk, James Andersen
[00:27:09] S0: What about this period for you when it comes to day to day? I mean, like, it's so easy to say now, like, small kid and kids at home. But in reality, you have those kids at home, lack of sleep, sometimes four or five hours, constantly waking up during the night. Then you have those long days at the office. How was the day today like? Was this just like another moment for you where you just keep your head down and just just keep going? Pretty much. It's really not It's They're just breaking there. [00:27:38] S1: Honestly, it's a blur. Like, because it's just as you describe it. You just keep your head down and you go forward. And like, spent all my waking time when I wasn't at the office the boys and my wife. That's what I did. We were not a gigantic firm. We didn't have a lot of people to manage at the time. It was really more finding new deals and managing the portfolio we had. So it manageable, but the thing was just the stress of, first of all, you never want to take somebody's money and lose it, ever. So there's the stress of that. And our original investors were people that we knew, mostly people that we knew, that we had known. So you don't want to lose their money. So you're going to work really hard. Really, I was more worried about losing other people's money than I was about losing my own, because I didn't have that much in these deals, because I didn't have anything to invest in them when we did them. I had very, very little money. So from that perspective, it was all upside, but I just didn't want to lose anybody's money.
00:27:38 · James Andersen, Mikk
[00:27:38] S1: Honestly, it's a blur. Like, because it's just as you describe it. You just keep your head down and you go forward. And like, spent all my waking time when I wasn't at the office the boys and my wife. That's what I did. We were not a gigantic firm. We didn't have a lot of people to manage at the time. It was really more finding new deals and managing the portfolio we had. So it manageable, but the thing was just the stress of, first of all, you never want to take somebody's money and lose it, ever. So there's the stress of that. And our original investors were people that we knew, mostly people that we knew, that we had known. So you don't want to lose their money. So you're going to work really hard. Really, I was more worried about losing other people's money than I was about losing my own, because I didn't have that much in these deals, because I didn't have anything to invest in them when we did them. I had very, very little money. So from that perspective, it was all upside, but I just didn't want to lose anybody's money. [00:28:42] S0: Yeah, you can probably see why I keep digging because I think it's such an important phase of someone's career and not too many guys are just they don't make it. And that's why I want to keep asking those questions to give folks listening really like what it requires to really do stuff. [00:28:59] S1: Look, it's not easy, but it's really more persistence. You know, the term overused term maybe is grit, but it's persistence. You just got to stay at it. Just stay at it. Keep going.
00:28:59 · James Andersen, Mikk
[00:28:59] S1: Look, it's not easy, but it's really more persistence. You know, the term overused term maybe is grit, but it's persistence. You just got to stay at it. Just stay at it. Keep going. [00:29:14] S0: Let's talk about the deal number three. It was the daycare deal again, with a terrific partner you've said before.